Among the eight homicide victims scattered across four rural Ohio crime scenes, two young women were nursing infants when they were gunned down.
The gunmen spared the babies’ lives. But, at one scene, a singularly sickening scenario unfolded, a prosecutor says.
While his 2-year-old daughter was safe elsewhere, Edward “Jake” Wagner entered a home under the cover of darkness in April 2016.
He approached the toddler’s mother, Hanna May Rhoden, 19, as she lay in bed with a days-old infant, fathered by another man; he was not present.
Hanna Rhoden was the
Geneva Rhoden, patriarch of the Rhoden family, is helped into court during the trial of George Wagner IV, 30, in Pike County Common Pleas Court in Waverly, Ohio, Monday September 12, 2022. He is charged with 22 counts, eight of them are aggravated murder, in connection with the murder of eight members of the Rhoden family on April 21-22, 2016 in Pike County. Today was opening statements. (Liz Dufour/The Enquirer/Pool)
main target of assassination because she and Jake Wagner were locked in a custody battle over their little girl, Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa said….